Dentists professionally insist now that their patients floss their teeth at least three times a day or after every meal. The most popular of dental floss dispensers provides a reel of dental floss in a rectangular package and a cutter for cutting a line of dental floss. The top of the package and the cutting blade are protected by a hinged lid. Unfortunately, this form of dispensing does not provide a user with a tool for reaching into the back of the mouth. The user is forced to wash up and use their fingers to find the hidden areas in the teeth.
Although prior art flossing dispensers have addressed many of the problems in reaching to the rear teeth, most designs are awkward and fail to fit comfortable in the user's pocket. The elongated designs which are constructed to reach the rear of the user's mouth often break in the user's pocket. The flossing dispenser designs with flossing bridges break off posts which make the flossing action impossible.
Hundreds of patents have issued over the years on dental floss tools designed to overcome these problems. Dental floss dispensers are illustrated and described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,375,615, 5,860,435, 6,006,762, 6,131,586, 6,363,949. Unfortunately, these concepts have failed to provide the public with a successful tool for reaching far into the mouth because the floss becomes lodged into the dispensing feed of the dispenser. Although most people today still use the old plastic floss dispenser, there is still a need for a portable dental floss cleaning and dispensing tool that can be carried in a pocket of a shirt or pants.